In These Small Hours
by Measured
Summary: As time goes by, they change, but never break. Or, How The Mother Saved The Finale. Ted/Mother, Barney/Robin, Marshall/Lily.


Title: In These Small Hours  
Character/Pairing: Ted/Mother, Barney/Robin, Marshall/Lily  
Series: How I Met Your Mother  
Rating: PG-13  
Summary: As time goes by, they change, but never break. Or, How The Mother Saved The Finale.  
Author's Note: Fix-It fic for the finale. I was going to make this a treat for NPT, then I realized it didn't fit well enough into the prompt. Anyways, it's for (and betaed by) Multiversecafe. Sorry about dragging you into a show which would just break your heart, but it was a fun ride other than the finale, eh?

Title comes from These Small Hours - Rob Thomas

HC_Bingo: family

**.**

_"Kids, these are a few stories your father forgot to tell."_

_Tracy leaned in to touch his shoulder._

_"I know what you're thinking. 'How could dad not tell anything? We've been here for seven years." She smiled as both her children nodded knowingly. "But this won't be too long."_

**.**

Barney laid back on the hotel bed. He could hear another couple fighting through the thin walls. His suit had gotten wrinkled, but he'd be damned if he'd fall to the level of sweatpants and a bottle of jack spent in front of _Soap Operas_. He'd had this game changing of _when I feel bad, I stop being sad and be awesome instead_ idea, and for years, it'd worked out for him. But right now, he was having a hard time feeling awesome.

The lack of wi-fi sure wasn't helping.

She'd gone outside to get better reception. She was calling the lawyer, and years of failing and finding her and giving up and here he was. He was far from New York, from paintball or bars or anything else.

His phone dinged. He thought about ignoring it a moment, because Ted was liveblogging his kid's recital again.

_I found this picture while looking for something else. I don't know if you were ever sent this one._

There was Robin, right beside him and looking so beautiful and perfect in her wedding dress. He squeezed his phone, feeling like a vice was squeezing down on his chest.

Slowly, the alcohol-fueled haze and shock began to wear away. He remembered that first time of meeting Tracy, before she was Tracy and Ted's wife and was just some other conquest, to the one who set him straight back to Robin. Every image, rainy kisses and sundresses and high fives came rushing so fast. Past every fight, past every time he realized he'd never be able to make another play, every time he felt like he couldn't do this was pushed aside by the sudden _rightness _ of them together. He'd slept with so many girls that they blurred together, but no one even came close to Robin.

The door opened, and Robin closed it softly behind her.

"I got his voicemail," Robin said, her voice tight. "I'll try again in a few hours."

Barney pushed himself up from the bed. The plan began even before he could think it through, just like all the best plans: fueled with passion, alcohol and possible bad ideas.

"I don't want to give up. Even if it doesn't get easier, I want to keep trying. You aren't just my wife; you're my _bro_. "

With no ring, he knelt before her and took her hand.

"Robin Scherbatsky, will you marry me again?"

"How many times are we going to go through this? We get too close and push each other away," Robin said. Her voice caught. "We're never going to change."

"I don't know if it ever gets easier. I don't think we're made that way. But, if it's you, I'm willing to try. Besides, another honeymoon, eh?" He nodded at her, and smiled suggestively.

She softened. The mood between them broke into something else. Hope and humor and all the shared brokeness between them. He knew the pieces, the fears, and understood. Maybe they'd always be halfway towards the door, but if they were halfway towards the door together, he could make it.

"Do you want to sort this though later?" Robin said. She looked towards the bed.

Ah, yes. The Too Many Feelings, Let's Just Bang. He'd practically patented it.

He smiled; she was the perfect woman.

When he rose, they managed to high five and end with a killer kiss. And really, who else was awesome enough to manage that together? No one, that's who.

**.**

Ted was halfway into a break up beard. Since the semester was on break, Barney and Robin were on assignment, while Marshall and Lily were miles away in Long Island. He looked on the verge of quoting poetry, getting too drunk and leaving drunken voice mails on Marshall and Lily's phone. Again.

"Sweetie, there's this thing that let's you talk to other people across the internet. It's called Skype," Tracy said.

In fact, she'd already contacted them. She didn't say this, however. Instead she just pulled the laptop out of the bag, and put it on the table. The connection dialed up, and in seconds, Barney lifted up his hand for a high-five. "Skype five! It's Wedding at Barney's 2: Going Vegas!"

"Congratulations," Tracy said. She smiled, enigmatic, the secret kept between them once again.

"I call her Wife Wife, now," Barney said with a smirk. He adjusted his tie just enough to show the lipstick marks and hickies on his neck. "Like a regular wife, but with twice the awesome. And guess what? Brobibs are going places. _I told you they would._"

Barney frowned at the screen.

"Ted, what's that on your face? Are you trying to join in as a guest star on _Duck Dynasty?_"

"First, how would you even know that?" Ted said.

Barney looked solemnly into the camera. "Ted, I'm not in New York anymore. I had to do horrible, unspeakable things. I...had to go to Walmart."

"He survived, too," Robin said. She looked at him, a consummate survivor who could make her way even out of the most frightening of Walmart stores.

"But, I am a different man. I will never get the reasonably priced _tackiness _ off of me," Barney said. He visibly shuddered.

Barney's phone dinged, and he picked it up. "I've got a Bear guy to see, catch you later, Ted. The videos will be up on my blog, don't forget to check it!"

The call ended abruptly. Tracy dialed Marshall and Lily's. She rested her head against him, feeling the final relaxation as he was surrounded by his friends again, even when they were miles away.

**.**

With another child on the way, Lily no longer had time for work. Her days were social parties and stained bibs, a mix of two worlds meshed together with uneven edges. Still, she managed with a taut sort of happiness, pulled from both ends.

"It's good to see you again," Lily said. "We should do this more often."

Lily plucked up a toy from the floor before Tracy could slip. "I know how that is," Tracy said, with a little smile. She turned to the fridge, touching the side of the new fingerpaintings across the doors.

"That's really good," Tracy said. "How sweet. Is it Marvin or Daisy's?"

"Oh no, that was mine. I couldn't get him to calm down unless I joined in as well," Lily said.

"This is really good," Tracy said. "I'd know; I was almost an art major."

They laughed together, old memories shared. Ted wasn't the only one who had a lot of stories to tell. Tracy could keep them up late at MacLaren's nursing nostalgia and a beer just as well.

"You know, I saw this recent class about modern art. It isn't too far from here, and they said it was for the whole family," Tracy said. "I even picked up the flyer on the way here."

As Lily looked at the class, something changed over her. A drive, a dream, a desire. A month wouldn't go by before Lily had herself an art room. Years later, when Marshall a judge, he'd put his wife's award winning art up on his wall. He'd visit her art shows, but all it happened with a single step.

**.**

When they'd gotten the news, they'd just held each other alone in that hospital room. The lights were a dull glare, filled with a synthetic smell of fake flowers and cleaner. The doctor had left them alone.

She knew what loss was, and it ached at her that one day, Ted would have to know what it was to lose someone. They didn't talk, even on the way home. Usually he talked too much, stories and dreams and grand visions, but something had gone out of his eyes.

NPR droned on, and Ted didn't even correct her pronunciation on the history of stamps and driving gloves. When they got home, he went straight for the bathroom. She heard no sobs, just the sound of a shower, and the hum of an electric razor.

"Are you getting rid of your breakup beard?" She said through the bathroom door.

"You'll see."

When he stepped out, he was completely bald. Pieces of dark brown hair clung to his shirt in places he'd missed. His eyes were red-rimmed and puffy. And yet, he was the most handsome man she'd ever seen.

"We're going through this together. We're going to match," Ted said. He ran his hands over his hair. "And I'm going to read you every night through every chemo treatment, and bring Luke and Penny to visit you as long as it takes for you to get better."

His voice broke. He pulled her into his arms, so unwilling to let go. She couldn't say everything would be all right, because life had taught her that it wouldn't. But she wanted to hope for him, she wanted to believe.

"We're going to get through this," Ted said.

All his life was getting through. Failures and lost loves which would one day become anecdotes told in a MacLaren's. He'd hoped through so much, when she'd all but given up. All he knew how to do was keep hoping and keep hanging on.

She clutched his hand in hers, tight with every memory between them. She'd never though that happiness like this could exist again. All she wanted was a little longer to stay with her children, to wake up every day and make muffins sing, kiss him over morning coffee. A million days of such beautiful mundane rituals, reruns on TV and curled up on Sunday mornings.

Even pushed this far, she couldn't give up.

"We could go as Coneheads for Halloween," she said finally, trying to smile for him.

Through the tears, he held her a little closer.

"I think it's time to retire the Hanging Chad costume," Ted said.

**.**

"And that, kids, is the story of how the group stayed together. I think it's just as important as how he met me. Anything else you need to add, Ted? They need to sleep sometime."

Ted clasped his hand in hers. They shared a long look, as their kids rolled their eyes. They were used to long declarations of love from Ted over the breakfast table, of him filling whole rooms with flowers and every grand gesture which he never gave up for a second of their marriage.

"Kids, don't give up. Even when it seems hard, fight for the people you love. It can be so easy to let them slip through your fingers and just move on. But if you really care about someone, you'll stay there and read to them. You'll return to the same places, take a flight to spend a night in a café where you don't speak the language just to hear about honeymoon details."

His hair had grown back in. Barney and Robin liked getting married so much that they were going for a marriage via skydiving, with talks of getting married Canadian style, on a pair of ring bears next. Lily's art was being featured in a recent gallery, how one stay-at-home mother had revolutionized art into a whole family affair. Little footprints and fingerprints all together to form a chaotic mural of their life.

Sometimes they were all in New York together for stolen hours and precious seconds. But even when they weren't, they still talked every single week, even when they had to stay up late to make up the time zone difference.


End file.
